


bruises

by MadGaySailor



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Robin has homophobic parents, and ofc Steve offers some comfort, cos their platonic friendship is what we all stan, platonic friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 14:17:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20136832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadGaySailor/pseuds/MadGaySailor
Summary: Robin thinks Steve doesn’t notice the bruises on her arm. Then breaks when he asks her about them.(Or: Robin has homophobic parents and Steve offers her some comfort





	bruises

**Author's Note:**

> I know this can’t in any way compare to the heart to heart from the actual show but that still doesn’t mean I can play around with it x)
> 
> Hope it’s any good <3

Robin wasn’t one to talk about home very often. The subject had been brought up a couple of times, sure, but then it was mostly Steve complaining about his own shitty unsupporting parents and she would just laugh or make some witty remark (_“Sure, but none of that could ever be on you, could it, dingus?”_). And when at times he would offhandedly inquire about it, she seemed to mostly steer clear of the topic, mumbling that her parents weren’t really involved in her business and she was mostly on her own with this whole summer job, saving up to eventually take off to college in California or somewhere on the west coast. And even when he directly asked about what kind of sports her father liked or whether her mother was in one of those book clubs his own one was so passionate about, she always brushed it off, noting that she had to check the inventory or there were customers waiting at the front.

  
Eventually he sort of gave up on the whole matter, but that didn’t mean he had some minor suspicions, of course. Most of the time she seemed cheery and upbeat, commonly noticeable by the joy she took in taunting him or watching him struggle to land a date with one of the female customers, but there were also moments when she suddenly... well, almost seemed to turn into herself, just staring blankly into the distance, only responding to the most basic of questions. Then he would ask her if she was okay and she would go back to normal... sort of, but he wouldn’t have to expect any playful digs at his hair or another point on the _Harrington sucks_-board for the rest of the day.

  
And then there were the things he started referring to as the “Depressive Days”, of course. Those were the days when she almost seemed incapable of ever bringing up a smile and all her remarks were actually _snappy_ instead of playful. She’d tell him to shut up and do something useful, bitched about him leaving the counter when it was his shift and sometimes she’d even get so frustrated she accidentally started messing up orders, which naturally only lead to worse. One time he had offered to take over when she got two orders wrong in a row, and she had nearly exploded at him, hissing that he had to _shut the fuck up_ and _stop patronizing her_. After that he had proposed multiple times to talk about it, but she brushed it off every time, assuring him that she’d been just tired.

  
It worried him, but he never pushed too much. After all, it was not extremely unlikely even his mercilessly sarcastic coworker had her bad days.  
But then he started to notice the bruises.

  
She tried to mask them at first, initially trying a T-shirt with long sleeves under her sailor outfit, but it didn’t take her that long to get rid of it again, noting that it was a far cry from the practical solution she’d expected it to be. Then she tried make-up, though it was so poorly applied even the customers started to give her the occasional remark about it. And at some point she just gave up and the weak excuses made their entrance — _nothing serious, dingus, just fell off the stairs/ made a tumble on my bike/jeez, didn’t I already tell you I was getting into hockey again?_ And he would ask no further, partly because he didn’t expect she’d ever provide him a reasonable answer, partly because it maybe didn’t even matter. Except that was bullshit, of course. It _did_ matter. She was hurting, and it pained him he couldn’t do anything about it.

  
Then the opportunity presented itself, well, almost naturally.

  
This was the one afternoon at the end of the summer — patronage was dying down and Steve spent most of his shift being bored at the counter until it was Robin’s turn again. He called out and she didn’t answer. Frowning, he made his way to the back office, again not to any result; she was nowhere to be found. It was not until he made his way into the maintenance corridor when he heard a sound, though it wasn’t something he expected to hear.

  
It sounded like _crying_.

  
Tiptoeing over to the place where the frantic weeping was coming from, he started to recognize a certain familiarity in it. Then, to less surprise than he had originally wished for, he suddenly realized why; he was almost positive it was his coworker crying. He started to move a little faster, though he didn’t find anything else at the end other than what he had expected; sitting against the wall with her legs curled up to her body was Robin, shoulders shocking so heavily he was surprised she hadn’t injured them yet.

  
_ “Robin?”_ he asked, shocked.

  
Her head shot up and he got his first glance at her horrible, painful face; her eyes red and swollen,  
her cheeks glistening with tear streaks. “_Shit, Steve!_ Uh, s-sorry, I lost track of time, uh —” She tried to get up and he rushed to stop her. “Never mind your shift, damn it. What the hell’s  
going on? Are you okay?”

  
“Everything’s fine,” she muttered, shaking on her legs. “Just give me a minute and I’ll be okay,”

“Like hell you will, you look like shit. Come on, cut it out, sit down.”

  
“Steve —” She tried to stand up, tripped over her own feet and nearly went down again — Steve quickly grabbed her and helped her back on the ground. “There, take it easy. Okay, do you mind telling me now why I’m finding you here bawling your eyes out?”

  
“Please, it’s none of your business —”

  
He shook his head. “Yeah, fuck that. I don’t know what the deal is with you pretending like everything’s okay, but seriously, those outbursts, and those bruises — you can’t keep hiding shit like that forever. I just want to help you, so please, just tell me. Who’s been beating you?”

She didn’t respond, at first, then started chocking up again, so he patiently waited until she managed to get herself under control. She wiped her eyes out and sniffed: “D-don’t even know why I’m telling you this, but it’s... it’s m-my dad,”

  
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, sitting down. Sure, it caught him by shock, but it actually all seemed logical now; her unwillingness to talk about her home situation, the depressive periods and the bruises. He swallowed and went silent for a bit, trying to find the right words. “So... he’s been doing this for a long time?”

  
“I don’t know,” Robin mumbled. “I suppose he didn’t until I... until I told him I was...”

  
The rest of the words seemed to have gotten stuck in her throat; she tried forcing them out, but they just wouldn’t come, so in the end she gave up and pressed her lips together, shivers running through her body. Steve tried to run down the possibilities: _low grades? Sick of his shit? In love with a —_

  
And there it was, the answer falling in place, almost as if he’d known all along.

  
“Robin,” he asked, trying not to sound too shocked, “are you gay?”

  
She didn’t respond, just looked up at him with watery eyes. It was almost scary how many emotions he could read in them; rejection, sadness, hurt, but probably most prevalent; fear. And not even just fear for her father or whatever that godawful son of a bitch had done to her, he supposed, but fear for himself as well.

  
Safe to say it pretty much broke his heart.

  
“So...” he continued, linking his own hands around his legs and shifting a bit closer to her, “are they religious, or...”

  
She shook her head. “N-no, that’s got nothing to do with it at all. I guess he thinks he’s doing me a favor with it. Like he thinks it’s somehow withholding me from achieving anything and I should suppress it because it’s supposed to be some kind of switch I can turn on and off when I want to...” She swallowed. “Now that’s some fine fucking world view, isn’t it?”

  
“Yeah, that’s awful.” he said. “Well... have you talked to anyone about it?”

  
“Who would I go to?” she asked with a weak smile. “You make it sound like it’s that easy. And frankly, I was handling myself well on my own... or at least I thought I was, because you see how _that_ turned out. You’re the only one I’ve told so far.”

  
“Damn,” he muttered. Quite honestly, he felt lost for words; he wanted to comfort her, to tell her she was fine as she was regardless of what warped sense of reality her parents were imposing on her, but he wasn’t really sure how. “Well, you know, I can’t probably make it any less worse, but honestly, I don’t think you should regret anything. As much as I hate this job, I think it’d be a thousand times worse if it weren’t for you. And all this doesn’t change a single thing about that. Actually, I think it makes you even more interesting than you already are.”

“Oh Jesus,” Robin said, laying her head back against the wall. “Sappy really doesn’t fit you, Harrington.”

  
“Shit, I know,” he said on a rather helpless tone, and that made them both laugh. Steve actually felt relieved. This single accomplishment alone already meant the world to him — and to Robin as well, probably.

  
“Heck, I suppose you even got a better taste in girls than me,” he piped up.

“Yeah, but I mean, you’re setting the bar really low there, dingus.”

  
“Okay, harsh.” he muttered and she laughed even harder than last time, almost sounding relieved. “I suppose it’s true, though, back in high school, I was crushing so hard on Tammy Thompson —”

  
“_Tammy Thompson?_ Alright, that’s it, I’m taking everything back.”

  
That seemed to do it. She bursted out in a bright laughter, not even containing the slightest hint of sadness or regret. Steve felt himself chuckling as well. When she finally calmed down, chest heaving as if she’d just run a marathon, she shook her head and said: “Really, I don’t know why you care, dingus, but thank you. In retrospect, I think I could’ve used this.”

  
He shrugged. “Part of my act, I think. And uh, well, if you don’t mind —” He paused for a bit and she raised her eyebrows. “Hm?”

  
“Well, if you don’t mind, you can pack your stuff and come stay at my place for a bit, just to get away from it all. My old folks probably won’t mind, if, they even notice, that is.”

  
She sighed and looked at her shoes. “Oh, well, thank you, but I don’t know —”

  
“C’mon, it’ll just be for a little while, until you’ve collected yourself enough to tell them to go fuck themselves. And I’ll clean the place up before you come, promise.”

  
She smiled briefly before looking down again to think. She took quite some time, and for a moment Steve was worried she would refuse, until she finally made a helpless gesture and sighed. “Alright then, why not. As long as you give me a separate room to sleep in, dingus.”

  
“You got it.” He got up and offered a hand, pulling her up when she took it. “Alright then, that’s settled. Now how about we go break some company policy and down some of that sweet vanilla ice cream?”

  
“Yeah,” Robin smiled, “I think I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> God I love their platonic friendship so much


End file.
